The Chamber Plays

Abstract

In 1907 and 1908 Strindberg wrote five plays for performance at his own Intimate Theatre, Intima Teatern, in Stockholm: Thunder in the Air, After the Fire, The Ghost Sonata, The Pelican and The Black Glove . All were published in inexpensive editions by Ljus Publishing House and numbered as 'Chamber Plays', Op. 1 to 5. This represents the first occurrence in Swedish of the term kammarspel to designate a play but, as Strindberg himself acknowledged, he was inspired by Max Reinhardt's Kammerspiele, the small theatre adjacent to the large auditorium of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, which opened in 1905 with a performance of Ibsen's Ghosts with sets designed by Edvard Munch. Strindberg also sent Reinhardt German translations of these works soon after they were written, and the latter's expressionist performances of these plays would make some of them part of the theatrical repertoire, at least in Germany and Scandinavia, where the terms kammarspel and Kammerspiel have come to designate a genre of plays with a restricted cast of characters, an emphasis on mood rather than plot, and intimate settings, often in interiors that suggest psychological space, as well as a social setting. Strindberg himself participated in this development, for he himself designated certain of his earlier plays, most notably Easter , as Chamber Plays.